In the Heart and in the Head
by Nancy Brown
Summary: After the loss of Amy and Rory, River comforts her Doctor the best way she knows.


Inspired by "Everyday A Little Death" by Maribor_Petrichor. Written for Remix Redux 11: The Eleventh Hour.

With thanks to boomslovingthealien for the patient beta

* * *

She waits for him.

The TARDIS has been kind enough to provide a chair, and a friendly if silent presence. River senses her disjointed emotions through their link, her confusion. Linear time has no true meaning for the TARDIS. Neither does loss. Amy and Rory have always been lost to the angels. Amy and Rory will always be in another room somewhere inside her time-tangled corridors. River too shall always have been gone and always be here, and Martha and Rose and Jamie and Susan. Names whisper past River's thoughts, too quickly to grab and examine.

"It's different for us," she explains. The TARDIS sends comfort but the Doctor's first wife cannot understand grief.

River understands. It's why she's here, why she must be here now. For all that the Doctor skips and hops through the vortex like child through a garden hose, he is linear and she is linear. He needs someone linear with him now, when he returns. If he returns.

She tries to suffocate the thought, then trembles as it pops up again. What if he makes that choice? What if after all his losses, this is the one that breaks him? What if the man she loves can't stand losing his two best friends after the dissolution of so many other best friendships, and he decides he can't go on?

He won't. He wouldn't. River blinks back her fears, exchanges them with memories. She's seen other faces, later faces, older faces. The Doctor will go on because she has known him after this, seen him. He has carried the deaths of her parents with him after this moment, just as she knows he carries hers. He thinks he's clever, but his eyes have never once lied to her with success. River has always been a ghost to him, a corpse he's carried since a time before she met him, a time which her every step rushes closer. He's been mourning her since the first day she saw his face, and still he goes on.

The door creaks open. The Doctor shuffles inside, not bothering to latch it, knowing the TARDIS will sweep up behind him.

His face is old and haggard. His eyes tell only sad truths.

"Where did you go," she doesn't ask him. "What are you feeling," she daren't inquire.

She watches him take his old man's walk through the console room, staring about himself as though he's never seen the beauteous inside of his blue girl. "Tell me you didn't retrieve a memory worm," River says, the mildest joke she can scrounge.

"Memory worm?"

For a moment, River's sure he has found a worm and has forgotten, not just the worm but his whole long, miserable life, and every face and every friend. For a moment, River is more frightened than she's ever been, and that after she spent yesterday in the close company of a Weeping Angel.

The Doctor's gaze softens as he sets eyes on a torn scrap of paper, abandoned on the console. Amy's post-script, the end of River's future novel. Typical for them, she thinks, that not even her own book will be composed in order, or by herself. River's story is written by Amy, and Amy's by River. You could tie your brain in a knot just considering how she and her mum raised one another. River decides her second novel will be the tale of a mother and daughter, written for kiddies so she'll includes loads of blood and guts. Maybe pirates. Mum would be proud.

River takes his hand. The Doctor's head darts up, staring at her, at their joined touch. He's like a new kid, all legs and nubby horns. He's so young, and so lost, and she can't tell him. She can't explain that he will survive this loss as he has survived the rest. She can't tell him she has seen his face after this, and faces beyond, and they smiled, greeting her with joy. This pain will ease. These friends, no matter how he loved them, will be the same as all those who live aboard his ship were loved and lost and let go. She wants to tell him, Instead she draws his hand to her lips, kissing him in echo of how she kissed Amy's hand goodbye. The shiver passing through him tells her he knows.

"Come on," she says, leading him out of the control room. "Come with me." He lets her lead him like a small boy, but her plan has nothing to do with children.

Time passes strangely between them. This Doctor calls her wife and has lost her parents, therefore this is not their first kiss. Despite the lack of novelty, he's clumsy as she presses her mouth against him, breathing his air, tasting the sorrow on his lips. Grief has slowed him, paralysed him, bid him stock still as River pushes him against the wall inside the first room they find. She's spent days at a pop delighting herself and him inside his bedroom, inside the room she uses as her own when she needs her space. This Doctor - she nips at his chin and down his neck - doesn't hold her like the rest of him has, will. Memory jumbles with present.

River draws away.

"Tell me," she says.

"No."

Secrets and lies. What else is marriage made of?

She kisses him again, and this time he reciprocates, finally accepting the comfort she has on offer. Sex is a weapon and a joy and a medicine, and the Doctor is ill at heart.

He's new, newer than she imagined as she plucks each layer of clothing from him: shirt and socks and vest and trousers. His armour peels away, and she rewards him with a kiss at every stage. His hands tremble when he reaches for her, when he brushes his thumb over the revealed skin on her chest. River knows for a fact she is the second-fastest undresser who has ever lived, but she allows him time to linger and to learn. The hush of the fabric over her arms, catching awkwardly on hair and elbows, builds an electric hum inside her, matching the static discharging through her hair.

"We haven't done this before for you, have we?"

He doesn't answer. The Doctor draws her chin in his hand, once again focusing on the press of teeth and tongues, but now their bodies are pressed skin to skin. He makes a strangled noise in her mouth as one fumbling hand rests on her breast. River arches under the touch, and the curious stroke of his fingers.

Each body is different. Each first time is unique. For all his travels and all his flirting, the notion dawns on her that this particular body has not had sex even once. River smiles sadly under the kiss. This body is her favourite of all she's met. This face is the one she thinks of when she says her lover's name. The Doctor is the Doctor, but this is River's Doctor.

And his firsts are her lasts.

There's a bed. It's not his and not hers, and the TARDIS may very well have created it for tonight with a plan to consign both room and bed to electronic dust tomorrow. It will have to do. "Over here," she says, taking him by the wrists. "You remember how this works, don't you?" Teasing him is kinder than weeping.

The sadness in his gaze hasn't quelled, yet fire burns past the tears as he twists his hands free and pushes her down. For one crystal fragment of a second, River thinks this is it. He'll press her against these nameless sheets, thrust into her mindlessly and quick, and that will be the end. No more kisses, no more touches, no more nights spent wrapped up in each other's minds. Lost in his mourning, he'll come coldly inside her, and this part of her life will end.

He does press against her, he is firm at the skin of her belly, and his eyes are hard. The Doctor stares at her. She has no idea what he sees at this moment. Then his drags himself down her body, and pushes her legs apart. Sharp teeth nip their way between her thighs, pausing to taste her skin, before she feels him plant his nose into the soft thatch and breathe in. River grabs onto his hair, which only encourages him further. His tongue darts out and begins to work.

The electricity she felt before surges back, forming a single live wire through him into her clit and up her spine. He's not in full control of his body, not attuned to making love in this form no matter how many centuries he's worn it thus far, but he makes up for the lack of recent experience with a surprising enthusiasm. Comfort goes in both directions. Gasps are torn out of her.

There will be more nights for him. The body he lives in now will come to River again, more mature and more desirous of her, slowly training in the arts that please her most. She remembers her nights in Stormcage, just waiting for the hum of the ship's engines with their promise of adventure. She remembers the nights they never left the ship at all. The woman she was enjoyed the Doctor's growing experience in the study of her body. The woman she is doesn't mind teaching him here in this strange bed, with a gentle nudge to the side and a quick demonstration with her own finger to give him a proper idea as well as a good show. The face he wears next, and the one after, devoured River as starving men through their own first times with her only to partake shortly after in a lingering second round, full with the knowledge of how best to touch her. When both faces arrived unexpectedly for one birthday, the amorous pair treated her to two sets of experience competing for her approval, one's cock sunk deep inside her, the other's mouth well-practised with the same patient nibbling he's learning here.

"There," she breathes, and a moment later, comes. The blissful pleasure drives away all other thoughts for several soothing seconds.

The Doctor pulls away, watching her spasm, not sure what to do until she drags him over for a messy kiss, and uses her own shaky hand to guide him between her legs. He stutters his way through words in a language she doesn't speak, mouth slackening as he thrusts deeper. He's not at his most attractive, not gaping this way like he's going to pass out. She loves him regardless.

He's thick inside her, and cold. That aspect of his physiology, a trait she does not share, has had rather strange effects on her other sexual proclivities. She's the only person she knows who gets wet at the sight of an ice lolly. He's not like ice, he's like a chilly steel bar. She swallows her laugh at the thought of the Doctor pistoning into her. Never, ever laugh at someone's first time. The second is better, when the sex is all snorts and bent knees, and learning that sticking your tongue in his ear just makes him cringe.

"How does it feel?"

The Doctor hisses before saying, "River..."

"Can you feel me clenching around you? Can you feel how wet I am for you?"

He lets out a sound like his tongue is crawling into the back of his own throat before he jerks his climax into her. She shouldn't cheat that way, knowing how dirty talk both upsets him and gets him off instantly. Cheating is ever so much fun, though.

His face falls into her shoulder. He's panting, tired, and no doubt frightened of what just happened. They were robbed of a proper wedding night. Tonight is practically a funeral. As he lays his head against her, River can feel the self-loathing pour back into him, dispelling the good feelings.

"It's not your fault," she says instead of "I love you."

"Everything is my fault. It's always my fault."

She sighs, and wraps her arms around him. He's getting heavy, and she's stiff. On other nights, the nights she's spent with him in her past and his future, afterglow will be about them. He'll rest with her in his arms, and they'll kiss idly, and discuss quantum slip and nuclear fusion, and eat sticky fruits that drip over their skin until there's no choice but to lick one another clean. The past her enjoyed what the future him will bring. The present her and present him must dwell on sadder tidings.

"I couldn't save them. I can't save any of you." Defeat deadens his voice, whispered like a confession in her ear. "I never can."

He's right. He is an old, sad, kind creature who will outlive everyone he's ever known, yet he keeps fixating on quick, bright beings who rarely pass a single century. Eventually, he will lose all of them. Eventually, he will fail them. He has no choice. "That's not the point, my love. We're not here for you to save. We're here for you to offer the stars to us. When we accept the ride, we know the risks."

"I don't think any of you do. It's an adventure, that's all. If you knew, if any if you knew how much pain I'd cause you, none of you would come along. Amy and Rory didn't know."

"I knew. And it's always been worth the pain."

He turns his head to look at her. "Did I...did I hurt you?"

"Of course not." Not physically, which is what he's asking. If she's a bit hurt that his mind has already wandered back to her parents instead of staying here with the woman he's still inside, well, it's her life. Her choices were made a long time ago. She prefers to believe she made all of them herself.

He shifts his body, pulling out of her with an unpleasant gush. She's messy. River doesn't tend to mind post-sex mess, but tonight she's sore and uncomfortable, and her own heart has been breaking since the graveyard. Comfort sex should be more comforting than this.

She sits up and climbs out of the bed. They never even managed to get beneath the covers. "I'm going for a bath."

He blinks. "Now? Is that required?"

"You really haven't done this in some time." River kisses him on the head. "No, it's not required. I just want to freshen up. If you care to stay here, I'll be back in a while."

She leaves him in the borrowed bed, not bothering to dress as she treads the cold panels underfoot. The TARDIS will ensure she has heated towels. A bath isn't far, though she's never been in this corridor before now. River smiles to find a large tub filled with fragrant bubbles in a nearby room. "Thank you," she says aloud, and feels the tickle in return.

She isn't in the bath long before the door opens. Her lover steps into the room, as naked as she left him. The expression on his face is still drawn in pain and loss. River tenses. She came here to escape, just for a few minutes. She needs her own emotions in order before she can hope to help him further.

"Good," she tells him brightly to cover her disappointment. "You can scrub my back." The water sloshes as he accepts her invitation, settling in behind her with a loud plop and a squeaky squelch.

"Have we done this often?" he asks, soaping her back. "I don't remember this room."

"Never," she says, and curses herself. She's too wrung-out, too crackly. She isn't supposed to tell him future truths, not unless she intends to lock them into one path. Which she has, and she feels his shock as he judders to a stop against her back. Never, she said, and so never shall it be.

"I'm going to be better," he says, resuming his work after a long moment. Warm water trickles over her skin. "This will pass. I always carry all of you, but I always go on. I know it. But now isn't that time."

"No."

"Everything hurts."

"I know."

"I'm not going to be a good man to be with. But I think I need you to be with me." His hands have gone very soft against the flesh of her back. "I'm sorry."

"I'll stay. I said I'd stay."

He lets out a sigh. "I'm dangerous to be near."

"Yes," she says, turning to face him. "Always. But you are worth it. Doctor, you are always worth the danger."

She can see him shrinking away from that statement, and she kisses him before he can flee. "You. Are. Worth. Everything."

Finally, _finally_, he uncoils, and he holds her, sobbing.

When they leave the bath an hour later, wrapped up in the warm towels, he takes her hand and leads her down a different corridor. For this Doctor, it is the first time he's taken her to his bedroom, although River's been here many times before. She won't tell him, not now. Spoilers.

The door slides shut behind them, and he reaches for her. "Let's try a second time." He kisses the tender skin of her wrist.

"Let's."


End file.
